Chen Xiaole is a food delivery rider scraping by at the bottom of the city, crushed by rent and bad reviews. But when he finds a damaged ancestral Daoist book, The Lost Lore of Ten Thousand Arts, he accidentally steps into the world of the occult.
His starting abilities are laughably bad: the evil-repelling talismans he draws work only sometimes, he can barely make out “filthy things” and is terrified of them, and he has to make do with expired glutinous rice to cast spells.
To make a living, he grits his teeth and starts a “spirit communication” business. From helping his roommate deal with sleep paralysis caused by a ghost to handling a child spirit in an apartment complex and resentment in an office, he combines amateur Daoist magic with modern tricks like searching ancient texts on his phone and using a laser pointer to pinpoint targets, solving all kinds of bizarre supernatural cases in a thoroughly clumsy fashion.
As his abilities improve, he rents a secluded little shop as his base, meets a female coroner who believes firmly in science and a community busybody who knows all the local gossip, and gets caught up in clashes with rogue cultivators and occult clans.
This greedy, timid “office drone Daoist” carves out an unexpected path to success amid the strange and dazzling world of the modern city, with plenty of snark and surprises along the way.
After all, if he botches this job, the price won’t just be a bad review. The whole city’s life will be at stake.
